Big Mo's Blog

Hip Hop Album Sales: Week Ending 12/1/2013

by Big Mo,posted Dec 5 2013 12:42AM

Eminem's "MMLP2" falls to #2, Hopsin's "Knock Madness" cracks the Top 100 and the AMAs appear to impact the charts.

This week on Billboard's Top 200 albums chart, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 lands at #2, this time losing the #1 spot to One Direction. Additionally, Hopsin's Knock Madness breaks into the Top 100 and the American Music Awards appear to impact the charts.

Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 Lands At #2

Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 sold approximately 199,000 units this week. That wasn't enough to top Midnight Memories, One Direction's new album, which sold approximately 547,000 units in its first week. To date, Eminem has sold about 1,323,000 copies of his most recent project. Mathers helped promote The Marshall Mathers 2 last week by unveiling a music video for "Rap God." He is reportedly also prepping a music video for "The Monster," a single of his that features Rihanna. For the first time in several weeks, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was the only Eminem album in the Top 200. In the first week of MMLP2's release, Eminem had eight albums make the list. "Rap God" can be viewed below.

Hopsin's Knock Madness Breaks Into Top 100

Panorama City, California representative Hopsin's Knock Madness landed at #76. The Funk Volume release sold approximately 12,260 units this week. In total, the album has moved more than 16,000 copies. The #76 placement is an improvement from last week's placement at #132.

Fellow Funk Volume emcee SwizZz recently spoke with HipHopDX about Hopsin's Knock Madnessand why he feels it's a significant release. "Knock Madness is an important album for a lot of reasons," SwizZz said. "Knock Madness really has the potential to take Hop's career to a new height. From a Hip Hop perspective, Knock Madness is important because it truly provides a fresh breath of air to today's Rap game. Hopsin's creativity and artistry can't be denied. He's the consummate artist, for real. Critics might not like his image, or preferred style, but no one can refute that he can rap his ass off."

AMAs Appear To Impact Charts

The American Music Awards (AMAs) appeared to have an influence on the charts this week. Pitbull, the host of this year's program, for instance, went from having no projects in the Top 200 last week to having two in the Top 100 this week. Pitbull appeared on the charts this week with Global Warming (#93) and Meltdown (#95). Pitbull sold approximately 10,000 copies of each project. Rihanna, who took home an AMA Icon award, also experienced an increase in sales. Her Unapologetic collection went from #178 to #116 selling approximately 8,700 units for the week. The AMA's Favorite Rap-Hip Hop Artist winners, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, also found a jump in sales. Their album, The Heist, which also earned the duo an AMA for Favorite Rap-Hip Hop Album, went from #52 to #30 this week. This year's Favorite Male Artist at the AMAs, Justin Timberlake, also saw his 20/20 Experience Complete collection go from #22 to #11. The 20/20 Experience's first installment also jumped from #88 to #36.